Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 14, No. 8, August 2026

By Anders Corr

Nukes should be a no-go for authoritarian countries, including Turkey and Egypt.

Decommissioned Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at the Titan Missile Museum, Green Valley, Sahuarita, Arizona. Source: Stephen Cobb.

Saudi Arabia wants to build nuclear power plants using U.S. technology. This would be a boon to the U.S. civil nuclear energy industry and limit Russian and Chinese nuclear cooperation with Riyadh. The deal is expected to endure 30 years and yield tens of billions in revenues to U.S. companies. Westinghouse Electric Company would likely benefit from at least some of the contracts that result. China has for years outcompeted Westinghouse in exports, so a win in Saudi Arabia would be a win for the United States.

However, there is a nuclear weapons proliferation risk, especially with Saudi Arabia. The authoritarian country and U.S. ally is suspected of seeking nuclear weapons, including through reported nuclear weapons cooperation with Pakistan. According to Tim Willasey-Wilsey, who worked as a diplomat for the British government, “Saudi Arabia had helped fund Pakistan’s nuclear programme since the early 1970s, and Pakistan had reciprocated by providing troops to defend the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.” Willasey-Wilsey was informed in 2010 that “two nuclear-armed aircraft (probably Mirage IIIs at the time) with Pakistani air and ground crews would be placed at the disposal of the Saudis at moments of crisis.”

In 2023, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) stated that Saudi Arabia would seek a nuclear weapon if one were acquired by Iran. Two years later he followed up with an agreement with Pakistan in which Islamabad ostensibly extended Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella to cover Saudi Arabia.

This kind of extension is arguably unreliable and would not take the place of an independent Saudi nuclear weapon to deter Iran, giving Riyadh reason to seek greater enrichment capabilities.

A U.S.-Saudi deal signed on July 22 (but not yet reviewed by Congress) could include a “black box” enrichment facility manned by U.S. personnel. The deal includes a provision allowing enrichment that would be unprecedented for the United States building such technology in an authoritarian state.

On July 23, President Donald Trump said that the agreement would not proceed without Saudi recognition of Israel. He said that there would be no enrichment involved. This is encouraging.

However, the agreement text is private and there are mixed signals coming from Washington. Any black box facility could still give Saudi Arabia an opportunity to seize the hardware and technical knowledge necessary to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels in an emergency, or if the United States at some future date were in a weak negotiating position with Riyadh. Given a break between Riyadh and Washington, or top-cover from Russia or China, there would be little to stop the Saudi military from seizing any enrichment facility on its own soil.

Civilian reactors typically require uranium enriched to 3 to 5 percent, known as low-enriched uranium (LEU). Some reactors need almost 20 percent LEU. The ability to enrich uranium to these levels gets a country most of the way, from a technological perspective, to developing a nuclear bomb. High-enriched uranium (HEU) is anything above 20 percent. Weapons-grade uranium is HEU above 90 percent.

The simplest gun-type nuclear weapon requires about 50 kilograms of 93 percent HEU. If the Saudis acquired the modern centrifuges for a single nuclear reactor they could produce enough HEU for 15 to 30 such low-tech weapons per year. Such proliferation would increase the risk of nuclear terrorism as well. Many of the 9/11 terrorists, including Osama bin Laden himself, came from Saudi Arabia. An enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia that produces HEU would increase the risk of a terrorist building a nuclear weapon.

Add to this risk to U.S. national security that a more permissive agreement with Saudi Arabia could further incentivize other countries in the region to seek or redouble their efforts to enrich uranium or acquire nuclear weapons, including Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Turkey and Egypt are building nuclear plants with the help of Russia. Both have refused U.S. terms not to enrich uranium. In February, Turkey said it may enter a nuclear arms race if Iran continues down that path. Like Saudi Arabia, both Turkey and Egypt are authoritarian countries with a terrorism problem.

The situation is further complicated because like Turkey and Egypt, Saudi Arabia could go to Russia or China if the United States does not comply with its request for nuclear technologies. On top of the tens of billions of dollars Russia makes from building a power plant, it can get future revenues for supplying nuclear fuel. Moscow’s influence in recipient countries increases if it has Russian nuclear experts running the plant. They can threaten to peremptorily abandon the plant, which could threaten the country’s energy security in the best case scenario, or cause a nuclear meltdown and the release of a deadly radioactive cloud in the worst.

The Middle East is daily getting more dangerous, which makes the countries there seek nuclear capabilities that make it yet more dangerous. It’s a classic negative spiral that poses a nuclear security dilemma and risks of nuclear terrorism and rising authoritarianism for all concerned.

The American people deserve to better understand the entirety of these complex and interrelated risks. At the very least, the text of the Saudi deal should be made public. The deal has a better chance of being passed if the text makes clear that enrichment and reprocessing will not take place on Saudi soil.

Congress has the right to review the Saudi deal, and consider its wider implications and context. It should do so immediately and thoroughly, while rejecting partisanship on so important a matter. As Trump has averred, the ultimate US-Saudi deal should include recognition of a democratic Israel, and no nuclear enrichment.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey should simultaneously be banned from acquiring nuclear knowledge from Russia or China, enriching uranium, or reprocessing nuclear fuel. They should instead import their civil nuclear technology and fuel from the United States and other nuclear supplier democracies. All three should agree on short-notice nuclear inspections by the United States and allied democracies. If they do not agree to all of the above, they should be sanctioned or tariffed. This would provide the agreement with an enforcement mechanism and put Saudi Arabia on an equal footing with other countries in the region. It would mitigate the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation among authoritarian countries in the Middle East while pushing Russia and China out of their civil nuclear power systems.

While a Saudi nuclear deal with the United States is certainly better than a Saudi deal with Russia or China, U.S. diplomacy with Riyadh should encourage Saudi reliance on democracies like the United States, United Kingdom, and France for a nuclear umbrella against Iran. Pakistan is autocratic and unreliable as a nuclear backstop. Unfortunately, even allied authoritarian countries should not be trusted with nuclear weapons. However, they can and should benefit from a U.S. and allied nuclear umbrella.

Anders Corr has a BA in political science from Yale University, a PhD in Government from Harvard University, and extensive international experience in the field of intelligence. His most recent book is The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy & Hegemony (Optimum Publishing International, 2021).